We dare not stop dreaming and fighting for Zambia to be our land of work and joy!
By Azwell Banda,
Thinking about how best to wind down 2024, I have been going through some of the world’s most influential and historical documents, concerning human liberation, emancipation, freedoms and human rights.
I found the 1955 South African “Freedom Charter” and its demands most inspiring for this article. The Freedom Charter became the uniting and most inspiring document of Black and African people in South Africa who fought to end the abominable racist, capitalist, White Supremacist and colonial-apartheid regimes.
The Freedom Charter has 10 basic demands. These are:
The People Shall Govern!
All National Groups Shall have Equal Rights!
The People Shall Share in the Country’s Wealth.
The Land Shall be Shared Among those who Work It!
All Shall be Equal Before the Law!
All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights!
There Shall be Work and Security!
The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened!
There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort!
There Shall be Peace and friendship!
Not surprisingly, I find these demands extremely useful for Zambia today. Zambia does not belong to the politicians who for the moment are mandated to govern us. For 60 years now we have lived under the toxic umbrella of tribalism and yet Zambia belongs, equally, to all of us, in all our 72-plus ethnicities of all races. All our politicians, including Kenneth Kaunda, altered and interfered with the system of government to subvert the will of Zambians, for themselves. Hakainde Hichilema is doing the same, with disastrous national consequences.
In the past 60 years, the majority of Zambians have been robbed of their birth right to development by our parasitic political elites who have sustained our neo-colonial economy and form of government which clearly are founded on colonial injustice and inequality. Zambia will never be developed, prosperous and free from hunger until we abolish our neo-colonial status by defeating imperialism and capitalism, and our neo-colonial elites who thrive on this status. Then, and only then, can all people in Zambia of all ethnicities enjoy equal opportunities and equal rights, as is their birth right.
For 60 years now, our national poverty and backwardness are testimony to the absence of true democracy in Zambia. “Democracy” is not voting to sustain humiliating material and cultural poverty and backwardness; it is eradication of these human made evils. Zambia is, at 60, ripe for a new and emancipatory economic and political system in which the will and socio-economic interests of the majority of Zambians shall rule. Zambia has, for the past 60 years been dominated by imperialism and capitalism, and its local parasites. We are ripe for revolutionary economic and political change which must lead to the birth of an economy and politics in which the interests of the mass of the people of Zambia dominate.
We have a political system in which the majority of Zambians are treated as voting cattle, and not free and equal citizens, by our neo-colonial economic and political elites. Today, our elites have lost all shame and lie freely and openly, are thoroughly corrupt, loot the state, plunder our natural resources and pawn our national wealth to foreign money recklessly, illegally and unconstitutionally. Those in the opposition spend their time lampooning those in government, while merely waiting for their turn to put their snouts in the national trough. They know they are at least guaranteed five full years of corruption, thievery and looting, when they are in government.
We can, and we must fight to make representative, elected government a true and functional part of our democracy. All our economic and political neo-colonial elites have collapsed and abandoned the basic principles and practices of representative and elective politics and government, through their gluttonous appetite for unearned wealth, rotten and unbridled corruption, misrule, illegal and unconstitutional governance. We must restore the power of the vote to Zambian citizens by fighting and winning the war for a truly sovereign and democratic Zambian peoples’ government.
Open, naked criminality and unconstitutional conduct is how they govern us, our neo-colonial economic and political elites. They parrot the “rule of law” and commit crimes freely and openly, when in government. They weaponise and deploy “tribalism”, a colonial inheritance, for their personal economic and political benefits. They have successfully divided the country into two parts: North East and South West, on “tribal” lines. Today, due to their unbridled corruption, tribalism and thirst for personal power, Zambia is poised for civil war or genocide. The UPND is the most undiluted, pure form of arrogant tribal, corrupt, criminal and unconstitutional rule Zambia has ever suffered, and mercifully it is the last. We can, and we must abolish the right to stand as a representative in any state body as a privilege for the rich and our neo-colonial parasitic elites, by destroying the neo-colonial capitalist economy which manufactures such divisions in our country. We must restore equality in access to state bodies and defeat the corruption our elites use to capture state bodies for themselves.
We must eliminate the alienation – frightened separation – the majority of Zambians suffer about the Zambian government. A genuine, decolonised Zambian peoples’ government free from capitalism and imperialism is the surest way to cure this alienation. In such a government, all Zambians shall freely and actively participate in their own governance. Women and youths in particular, shall be encouraged, among other means, through provision and access to free, quality, decolonised and patriarchy cleansed education and skills training.
Girls and boys shall be encouraged and brought up to appreciate the equal worth of every human being whatever their sex, gender, ethnicity, race, creed or any such attributes. Throughout the “birth-to-death” education these values shall be inculcated in all Zambians. Special privileges shall be abolished, including by making serving in government at all levels mere work functions no different from any average work occupation.
We must, as a matter of urgency, re-vision and invent a new justice system which is truly decolonised, genuinely free from partisan political interference and easy to access by all people in Zambia. The collapse of our current neo-colonial thoroughly corrupt justice system threatens to throw the country into a civil war and possible genocide. We should not underestimate the threat to our collective national security the capture of the judiciary by Hakainde Hichilema entails.
A new system of justice, and educating, skilling and appointing judges throughout the justice system is long overdue. Our current system is long past its sell-by-date and thoroughly useless to provide justice and protect the state and our entire country from criminality and unconstitutional conduct, especially by our political elites in government. Legal education and legal services must be freed from money, to guarantee a genuine emancipatory, transparent, accountable, efficient, high quality, free and fair justice system. Our current over privatised legal and justice systems are havens of thieves, the corrupt, and unscrupulous lawyers and politicians. They must be done away with. It is a mockery of the word “justice” to call such a rotten and criminal system as such.
Zambian land, natural wealth, and all major means of producing wealth must be collectively and democratically owned, through the truly sovereign, decolonised Zambian people’s government. Only this way can Zambia rapidly grow and develop its productive forces to develop the country and wipe away mass unemployment, urban and rural poverty and the grotesque inequalities which are the perfect features of a neo-colonial state and society such as current Zambia is. Under the direction of the genuine democratic Zambian people’s government, every Zambian must have the right to utilise land for production, manufacture goods, freely trade and enter any profession of their choice.
Zambian land belongs to all the people of Zambia, and must be held for them by their state. Foreign ownership of Zambian land shall be abolished. Foreigners may lease land for limited times as determined by the state. The state shall have the duty and responsibility to help Zambians to productively use land, for whatever legitimate and meaningful purposes such allocated land may be put to use. Rural poverty will be abolished, among other things, by empowering rural folk to rapidly develop their land use methods, and agriculture. “Rural” must never be synonymous with “poverty”, in a genuinely decolonised and free Zambia.
Those Zambians who work the land for a living shall be encouraged to form state supported co-operatives and to rapidly raise their productivity. Scientific education on advanced land use, implements, capital goods for land use, fertilisers, seeds, dams, and many such things shall be made available for those Zambians working the land, especially for food production.
Highest quality, decolonised and emancipatory education and culture shall be free and open to all Zambians of all ages. No people can progress without these. For 60 years now, our education and culture have never truly been measured by how they relate to industry and agriculture. As a neo-colonial state, this disconnect between education and culture on one hand, and industry and agriculture on the other hand was necessary, inevitable and essential to keep us chained and permanently dependent on our imperial masters and their “donor community”. Nor was abolishing this disconnect in the best interests of our economic and political elites who are an excretion of, and parasitic on, our imperial masters and former colonisers. We must establish this connection to be free from neo-colonialism!
We can, and we must continue to dream and fight to make Zambia a land of justice, peace, work, joy, unity, comfort, and love for human and all life. But first, we must defeat our neo-colonial elites and their foreign masters whose historical mission it is to keep us chained to poverty and backwardness!
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